Once you've created a droplet (instance) at Digital Ocean, ServerPilot will configure it programmatically and provide you a graphical user interface for basic management features. It helps you set up users and databases while maintaining a firewall and regular security updates. Overall, it simplifies the complexities of running a server for anyone who values their time (that's all of us, right?)

If you haven't read Building an App Image to Resell at Digital Ocean (also at Tuts+), this might be a good time to review it. That tutorial walks you through building out a WordPress instance on Digital Ocean step by step. You can compare that guide to this one.

In this tutorial, I'll guide you through launching a WordPress site using ServerPilot and Digital Ocean.

Digital Ocean indeed is a great hosting platform to build on, one which I've covered in detail this past year:

Creating Your Droplet

I'll call mine image.publishingwordpress.com but you can name yours anything generic. I'll use the 512 MB image size:

Make note of the region you choose as your client will only be able to instantiate your image in the same region. However, you can also transfer the region of your snapshot if need be (with some downtime).

Note: Please ignore my specific IP addresses in these examples as these images were created at different times or in repetition and have different addresses.

You'll also receive an email like the one below:

Configure Your Domain Name and DNS

Now, you can visit your domain registrar and modify your DNS records to point your domain or sub-domain to the new IP address. In my case, I'm pointing the A record for image.publishingwithwordpress.com to 107.170.171.26. Yours will differ, obviously.

Then you can log in to your droplet again but this time using the serverpilot user and password:

hello Jeff$ ssh serverpilot@image.publishingwithwordpress.com
The authenticity of host 'image.publishingwithwordpress.com (107.170.171.26)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 41:b2:9a:e2:e5:a2:c0:db:80:53:c1:64:8e:2c:99:81.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'image.publishingwithwordpress.com' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
serverpilot@image.publishingwithwordpress.com's password:
Welcome to Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.13.0-43-generic x86_64)
* Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/
System information as of Tue Feb 10 15:35:59 EST 2015
System load: 0.01 Processes: 65
Usage of /: 11.2% of 19.56GB Users logged in: 0
Memory usage: 10% IP address for eth0: 107.170.171.26
Swap usage: 0%
Graph this data and manage this system at:
https://landscape.canonical.com/
The programs included with the Ubuntu system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.
Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by
applicable law.
serverpilot@image:~$

Install WordPress via SSH

Copy and paste the following commands to download and uncompress the latest WordPress code:

Visit Your New WordPress Site

Log in with your chosen credentials and you should see the generic WordPress dashboard:

And your site will appear like this:

If you return to ServerPilot and browse the settings, you'll notice that it's managing the security updates and firewall for you:

Certainly there are a lot of GUI steps but the process is quite simple. You could compare this to setting up a site with a managed host such as WPEngine or self-hosting WordPress. ServerPilot currently does not configure a caching solution such as W3 Total Cache with Varnish, as my self-host instructions do.

What's Next?

Now you know how to build a cloud-based instance of an application like WordPress on Digital Ocean using a managed control panel. If you want to dive in and do deeper configuration of your new site, check out my list of recommended WordPress plugins.

I hope you've found ServerPilot interesting and useful. I think it's a service with tremendous potential. I've had a couple of conversations with their CEO Justin Samuel and encouraged him to integrate WordPress installation directly into their dashboard.